Renz, Bettina
2005
Russia's “Force Structures” and the Study of Civil-Military Relations
The Journal of Slavic Military Studies
18
4
559–585
We have to consider the whole complexity of the meaning of the military in Russia, where shoulder to shoulder with the “first army”—the armed forces—there is a second one. In addition to the regular armed forces overseen by the Ministry of Defense, contemporary Russia has nine distinct institutions, or force structures, that have under their command their own militarized or armed formations. These institutions have remained noticeably understudied to date. This article provides an introduction to each component of the force structures and concludes that their existence should influence the future agenda of Russian civil-military relations analyses.